Politicians are reluctant to make specific promises to which they can be held accountable. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, determined to apply business principles to running the city, not only made such promises for what he would do if elected mayor, but he has now issued a "report card" listing the 380 proposals he made and how many of them he has accomplished in his first year.
The report card rated 80 percent of the proposals either "done," "launched," or "to be launched in 2003." But it is interesting to take a closer look at the scores he has given himself to see how the mayor's report card matches the facts.
The 58-page document included more than two dozen proposals, large and small, in the category of parks and open space. The mayor considered seven "done" so far, 15 "launched," and six "not done" or "reconsidered." Mayor Bloomberg has indeed fulfilled many campaign promises on parks in just one year, and has been particularly effective in carrying out promised policy changes and negotiating solutions to difficult situations. Sometimes, especially in the "launched" category, his grades might be a bit padded, since in some cases the only accomplishment is issuing a memo in support of proposed state legislation or contacting another agency for discussions. In other cases, he has just continued existing projects. The mayor also took credit for something that is not actually being done. And one unfulfilled promise, perhaps the most important one, was left out of the report card altogether.
Following is a rundown of some of the park-related campaign promises and what Mayor Bloomberg has or has not done to keep them:
COMMUNITY GARDENS
One of the major park-related achievements of the Bloomberg administration has been negotiating a settlement of the community garden lawsuit, resolving one of the most bitterly fought battles of the Giuliani era. The lawsuit, by state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, had temporarily blocked the city's plans to raze hundreds of community gardens for development. The compromise protected 198 gardens while leaving 114 gardens open to possible future development, subject to a review process. Another 38 gardens, which had already been through the city's land use process, were released for sale or development without further review. Although the final agreement did not please all parties and has left community gardeners with some unanswered questions about the status of the gardens that were saved, it protected hundreds of community green spaces in neighborhoods where parks are scarce.
BLOOMINGDALE PARK
The mayor worked out a compromise between the Staten Island borough president and the parks department that will allow ball fields to be built in Bloomingdale Park, which the mayor promised Staten Island voters even though the project was opposed by environmental groups.
SUPPORT EFFORTS TO TURN THE HIGH LINE INTO A PARK
A mayoral commission appointed to study the feasibility of creating an aerial green promenade on the abandoned West Side rail line "launched" this proposal. Also, in December 2002, the city applied for a Certificate of Interim Trail Use for the High Line from the Surface Transportation Board, reversing the previous administration's efforts to demolish the track.
RETURN CONCESSION FEES TO PARKS
The parks department does not get to keep the $60 million raised through concessions for restaurants, golf courses and other commercial enterprises in the parks; the money goes to the general fund. Mayor Bloomberg promised in the campaign that he would give this money back to the parks department, but nothing has been implemented yet. He did return $2 million collected from corporate sponsorship in the parks to the department - with half the money credited against budget cuts.
FIND ASPHALT AREAS APPROPRIATE FOR ARTIFICIAL TURF TO ALLEVIATE THE SHORTAGE OF BALLFIELDS
Expanding an ongoing program, the parks department installed nine synthetic turf fields on asphalt areas in 2002 and plans to install 21 more in 2003 - although whether this will actually happen because of future budget cuts is anyone's guess.
OPEN CITY HALL PARK
Mayor Giuliani beautifully restored City Hall Park and then kept it off limits to the public, ostensibly because of security concerns. Mayor Bloomberg has reopened most of the park.
DEVELOP A GREENWAY AROUND MANHATTAN
Pieces of this waterfront pedestrian and bicycle route have been built over the last decade, following a plan created by the Department of City Planning in 1993. Bloomberg has given the greenway a large boost through his enthusiastic support. The report card designates this proposal "launched," with a new section on the Harlem River recently opened and an interim route due to open in the summer of 2003. It also says that the parks department is in discussion with the United Nations and various state and city agencies on the next step for completing the long-term route.
ENSURE A PRESENCE IN PARKS WHEN PEOPLE ARE THERE BY HAVING A SECOND SHIFT OF WORKERS ON DUTY
Most park maintenance and operations staff work an early shift, leaving the parks by 3:30 p.m. The department has established a second shift, staffed mostly by seasonal playground associates and Parks Enforcement Patrol officers, to get more employees in the park during times of peak usership. But there is still a very small staff presence in most parks most of the time. (The exceptions are parks with private funding like Central and Bryant parks.) There are just 51 playground associates citywide, one for each city council district, and 158 Parks Enforcement Patrol officers (with 100 actively patrolling the parks) for the city's 1,700 parks. Further budget cuts could eliminate the playground associate positions this summer.
FERRY POINT PARK REMEDIATION
Under the campaign proposal to "clean brownfields that can be used as parks," Mayor Bloomberg took credit for "brownfields remediation work" in Ferry Point Park, a former municipal landfill in the Bronx that is being turned into a championship-level golf course. But in fact, golf course construction has proceeded without the usual remediation techniques generally applied to former landfills and other brownfields sites - no efforts to keep toxic dust stirred up by construction from blowing on nearby residents, no impermeable barriers to seal off the decaying garbage and its load of chemicals, no testing or collecting of the rainwater percolating through the dump. Explosive and possibly contaminated methane gas produced from decomposing trash is being vented, not through tall pipes as is usual, but an open trench that runs through a community park. The "clean-up" consists only of piling on nearly 2 million cubic yards of construction and demolition debris (that the developer gets paid to take), then covering it with soil and grass.
Bloomberg should subtract points from his score for allowing work to proceed without the proper cleanup of the underlying site, endangering the residents of the nearby homes and housing project. He is also leaving the city open to enormous potential liability because the concession contract granted during the Giuliani administration exempts the developer from responsibility for any environmental contamination stemming from the former landfill.
WORK TO COMMIT ONE PERCENT OF THE CITY'S ANNUAL BUDGET TO PARKS
Mayor Bloomberg seems to have forgotten to grade himself on one of the most important promises of his campaign to parks advocates: to double city funding for parks to one percent of the city budget. The city's financial difficulties have obviously prevented him from keeping his pledge, although the parks department now gets an even smaller piece of the pie than in previous years, .0357 percent. But because this promise is absent from the report card, it is impossible to tell if the mayor hopes eventually to fulfill it or is reconsidering.
Anne Schwartz is a freelance writer specializing in environmental issues. Previously, she was the editor of the Audubon Activist, a news journal for environmental action published by the National Audubon Society, and an editor at The New York Botanical Garden.
If the state legislature approves, Staten Island could gain 500 acres of parkland and finally put to rest a long abandoned highway plan dating back to the era of Robert Moses and the 1930s. A bill, introduced by Assembly members Robert A. Straniere and Michael Cusick and State Senator John Marchi would officially abandon plans to complete the Willowbrook and Richmond parkways and transfer the land intended for the highways to the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the New York City Parks Department. Much of the land, which is now under the jurisdiction of the state Department of Transportation, is in the heart of the Greenbelt, 2,800 acres of parks and natural areas in the middle of Staten Island.
The two parkways were part of a plan to speed traffic across the island between New Jersey and Brooklyn. Three separate studies over the past 20 years — by the Metropolitan Transportation Council, the City Department of Planning, and the State Department of Transportation — found that the highways would not ease the real traffic problem in Staten Island, which is local congestion from people traveling within the island. Although the state does not ever plan to build the highways, the land has remained under the control of the transportation department, which has issued permits for park-and-rides and other projects on it, avoiding the usual review process.
"People could see that if this is allowed to continue, then gradually this open space is whittled away," said David J. D'Ermilio, an aide to Straniere. He said that in addition to preventing the gradual encroachment of development into the heart of the Greenbelt, the proposal, called a demapping bill because it would remove the highways from the official map, would eliminate uncertainty over the highways and offer a cost-free way to add parkland to the city in bad fiscal times.
The legislation has support from residents who live in the Greenbelt, numerous Staten Island civic associations, and city and regional environmental and planning organizations. But the chairmen of the three Staten Island community boards, whose members are appointed by the borough president, issued a press release saying that they will not support abandoning the highways "until plans for improving all local streets impacted by the loss of the roadways are finalized," according to the Staten Island Register. Borough President James Molinaro's office declined to comment on Straniere's bill, but said that he would present his own proposal soon at an editorial meeting with the Staten Island Advance.
The community board chairs worry that, if sections needed to widen or straighten local roads become park, those projects could be stopped because state legislation would be required. The bill's supporters say, however, that the park bill would have no practical effect on the process of approving roadway widening plans, because any road changes on the land already require state legislation to resolve questions of title, a city land use review process and various other public reviews.
BALL FIELDS WIN AT BLOOMINGDALE WOODS
A bitter three-year battle over a plan to put recreational fields in Staten Island's Bloomingdale Woods came to an end with a snowy ceremonial groundbreaking in early February. Mayor Michael Bloomberg dug into a pile of dirt instead of the frozen ground to inaugurate a scaled-down version of the project, a compromise he negotiated between the Parks Department, which originally opposed the project, and its chief proponent, Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro. The compromise also involves building additional fields at the nearby Charleston site, most of which is slated for a retail complex.
While South Shore sports leagues and civic groups celebrated, former Parks Commissioner Henry Stern characterized the groundbreaking as a "dark day in park history," although he gave the mayor credit for reducing the size of the project, "so it's far better than the earlier plan."
The Parks Department and environmental groups opposed the project because thousands of trees would be cut down and wildlife habitat destroyed, and because they believed the park's sloping and soggy terrain would be unsuitable for playing fields. A study commissioned by the Parks Department showed that fields could be built more quickly and far more cheaply at other sites on the South Shore. "From the moment this controversy began, parks offered them recreational fields on flat lands," said Stern.
Former borough president Guy Molinari, however, had plans for the other potential sites, none of which were under the jurisdiction of the Parks Department. He made the building of fields in Bloomingdale Woods a top priority and used his political clout to win the support of former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The mayor silenced the Parks Department and had the project moved to the Department of Design and Construction.
Environmentalists, led by the local Protectors of Pine Oak Woods, sued to stop the project, raising the ire of sports and civic groups on the South Shore. In recent years, the area has developed rapidly, without an accompanying investment in schools, recreational facilities, public transit and other infrastructure. "We have all these new homes and new developments, huge new developments, I might add, and there is no place for these children to go," said Dee Vandenburg, president of the Staten Island Taxpayers Association, a civic organization addressing quality of life issues.
Protectors lost its final appeal last summer.
Chuck Perry, a board member of Protectors, said that he agreed that the area needed ball fields and recreation for the children. But, he said, "we should be upgrading the areas that are degraded, not cutting the natural areas we have left." He noted that a privately owned forest near Bloomingdale Park was recently clear cut for a large development. Perry also said it was "fiscally irresponsible" to spend three or four times the money to build fields in an area not suited for them.
To Mike Nagy, the borough engineer who did the redesign, the natural setting is the key to the appeal of the park. "Engineers can build many things," he said, "but we can't build fully grown trees." Nagy envisions the park, with three ball fields, two half-court basketball courts and a playground surrounded by trees, to be like a park somewhere in Connecticut — "where kids can sit under a tree and have lunch, where the temperature in the summer can be ten degrees cooler that it is on the street, where you can take a walk and see a ravine."
The final $9.1 million plan for Bloomingdale Park, which also includes a perimeter greenway, walking trails, bridges, and wetland boardwalks, is scheduled to be completed in the spring of 2004. An additional $6.5 million has been allotted for roadwork to increase access to the park, including two cul-de-sacs leading into the park. At the Charleston retail site, 42 acres will be transferred to the Parks Department, which will build a new 42-acre park with 12 acres of ball fields, tennis and basketball courts, and a fitness trail. The Staten Island Advance reported that the Parks Department has asked the contractor of the retail complex to provide a $7 million maintenance endowment for the new park, which is expected to be ready in the fall of 2004.
Anne Schwartz is a freelance writer specializing in environmental issues. Previously, she was the editor of the Audubon Activist, a news journal for environmental action published by the National Audubon Society, and an editor at The New York Botanical Garden.
A burst of violent crime in the parks has alarmed park advocates and raised questions about whether the parks are becoming less safe. In the past five months, there have been two murders and four rapes, including a brutal attack on a woman by five homeless men who were living unnoticed at the edge of Flushing Meadows Park in December.
There is no way of knowing if crime is increasing in the parks. Compstat, the New York Police Department´s computerized crime-tracking process, analyzes patterns of crime by precinct. According to the police, crimes that occur in parks are included in the precinct data, but the police department doesn´t break out information specifically on parks. The only park for which crime data are available is Central Park, which is a separate precinct. There, major crimes increased very slightly last year, from 127 to 132. Citywide, crime remains at a low level after declining dramatically in the last decade.
The parks department´s Parks Enforcement Patrol, or PEP, officers serve as a deterrent to crime by patrolling the parks, enforcing rules, and issuing summons for a variety of quality-of-life offenses. They have many other functions as well, including crowd control, first aid, and ice rescues. But after two decades of staff reductions at the parks department and the most recent round of budget cuts, there are very few officers actually in the parks. According to Joe Pulio, vice president of Local 983 of District Council 37, the union that represents the PEP officers, there are about 100 officers doing active patrol work in all five boroughs. They are stretched the thinnest outside of Manhattan, with 9 in the Bronx, 12 in Brooklyn, 7 in Queens, and 6 in Staten Island. (These numbers don´t include supervisory staff, officers stationed at recreation centers, or those who work at special events.) The high-profile and privately funded Manhattan parks, like Central and Bryant parks, have their own police or security forces.
Short of staffing up the Park Enforcement Patrol force – wishful thinking with the city´s current budget problems - park advocates say there are some steps the city could take to fight crime more effectively in the parks. At a recent news conference at City Hall, the park advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks and several city council members, including parks committee chair Joseph Addabbo, made several recommendations.
They called for the creation of a separate Compstat process to identify recurrent problems in the parks, which the police can miss because many large parks are divided among several precincts. Also, the police sometimes record a crime in the park at the closest street address, rather than a park location, according to Joe Pulio, whose union supports the recommendations of the park advocates.
They are also recommending putting the PEP officers under the supervision of the NYPD, as the city has done for school, housing, and transit officers. This would lead to more effective policing by improving communications and coordination between the PEP officers familiar with the parks and the police, park advocates said.
The Daily News reported that NYPD spokesman Michael O´Looney and Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe "politely rebuffed" the proposals, although Mayor Bloomberg has previously endorsed the idea of upgrading the Parks Enforcement Patrol officers and putting them under the control of the NYPD.
A quarter of a century after it was first proposed, the temporary artwork "The Gates" by Christo and Jeanne-Claude will be installed in Central Park. For two weeks in February 2005, 7,500 gates hung with saffron fabric will line 23 miles of park pathways. In making the announcement, Mayor Bloomberg said, "'The Gates' represents the latest provocative and innovative addition to our city´s grand tradition of public art." When the project was first proposed in 1979, it provoked an outcry from New Yorkers and was rejected by the parks department.
Prospect Park has begun a three-month experiment of banning cars during the weekday (except rush hours) in the winter. Until now, there were no car-free hours in the park during winter weekdays. The park is always closed to motorists on weekends and holidays.
Bicycle and pedestrian activists have long campaigned to keep cars out of the park completely. But some residents fear that the move will increase in traffic on local streets to intolerable levels. After the trial period, which ends April 4, officials will assess the impact on traffic in neighborhoods around the park.
Anne Schwartz is a freelance writer specializing in environmental issues. Previously, she was the editor of the Audubon Activist, a news journal for environmental action published by the National Audubon Society, and an editor at The New York Botanical Garden.